


Suddenly I See

by dragons_and_angels



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, M/M, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2021-01-02 17:53:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21165716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragons_and_angels/pseuds/dragons_and_angels
Summary: Lily had always known that to love James, she would have to love every part of him, including the part that belonged to Sirius. It took her a while to realise quite how true that was.





	Suddenly I See

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as a Pining Exchange treat but since there was far less pining than I intended and included a pairing the requester didn't want, I decided to just post it as its own fic.

Lily hates the looks she gets sometimes - from her friends, from his friends, even from the teachers occasionally - but she hates the looks he gets even more. Lily gets the kind of look which assume she's unobservant or naive or far too tolerant and it makes her want to scream at them, to stamp her foot and let out the worst Muggle curses she knows just to give them something else to talk about. She had even gotten the look from Remus once but her icy glare was enough to make him drop his gaze fast and he never made the same mistake.

But Sirius? He gets the pitying looks, the disbelieving looks as if people wonder why he doesn't just move on, as if it were just that easy. He would even get some disdainful looks from people, as if they were trying to warn Sirius away. The same people who look at Sirius with pity turn to James and say 'I don't know how you put up with him'. This would annoy James even more than Lily and he normally would send the person off with a flea in their ear. But they're better than the ones who approach Lily with fake concern in their voices and try to tell her about how Sirius feels about her husband. She tells them to fuck off and if they're dim enough to stick around and try to give her advice (namely cutting Sirius out of James' life), she normally starts hexing.

"Can you believe she said that?" he asked her one night when they were curled up in Lily's Muggle flat. The war was raging on in the Wizarding World and the Muggle world could feel their tremors but Lily has this place layered with protection spells and the two of them are as safe as they ever could be. Since she had some news to give James, she wanted to make sure they were somewhere private and relatively safe. "Sirius isn't someone I 'put up with'. He's my best friend. She's just a cow."

"I know, it was horrible of her." Margery Dearborn was a woman Lily normally liked but she did have a tendency to stick her foot in other people's business, not to mention she disapproved of Sirius. Lily would say it was his loud and prankster behaviour but since Margery treated James like he had walked on water and he acted the same, she was pretty sure it had to do with the Black name. "I get them sometimes," she said casually and picked up one of the books lying around and put it back on the shelf. Magic would do the same thing but Lily always liked having things to do with her hands.

"Get what sometimes? Do people say that you put up with me?" James looked a little surprised but not hurt, more like he would be amused if he wasn't still furious about the insult to Sirius.

"Of course not." Lily was pretty sure the more old-fashioned of their circle of acquaintances thought she had done well to pick up a pureblood from a respected family, especially considering her 'disadvantage' of being a Muggle-born. She hadn't mentioned this to James, mostly because no one had the stupidity to say it directly to her face. "They say such things about Sirius."

James grew very still. Lily pretended she hadn't seen it but continued to tidy up the room around her. This was not a discussion she had been planning on having tonight but it had been one she had wanted to bring up for a while. Last week when James had been injured in the Death Eater attack and Sirius had been beside himself since he had been the one with James at the time, Lily had known they couldn't go on like they had been doing. She liked Sirius and she had seen his reaction to the two of them getting engaged. She couldn't give up James, especially now, and she was sure Sirius didn't want her too, but they couldn't keep on not talking about certain facts. It was going to tear them apart, bit by bit.

"What do they say about Sirius?" James asked slowly and Lily knew he was truly angry now.

"They try to tell me how Sirius feels and then they try to give me advice about how to deal with it. They tell me to make you cut him out of your life if I ever want a proper marriage with you." And she had let the person who said that know exactly how unwelcome they were at the wedding.

There was a long moment of silence. James ducked his head so Lily wasn't able to read his expression. She paused in her organising, book in hand, in order to look at her fiancé. "But you - you've never objected to Sirius coming around."

"Of course not," Lily answered. "I knew when I started to date you how Sirius felt about you. I'm not cruel, James."

"How - how Sirius feels about me?" The anger was gone now, replaced by something very, very fragile. James was shaking, Lily realised, in a way that meant he was barely holding himself together.

"He's in love with you," Lily said slowly. She had put her book down and was now looking at her fiancé.

"No, he isn't," James said firmly. His jaw was clenched and he couldn't look her in the eye. "He's not. He thinks of me as a brother." The silence stretched between them, only broken by traffic noise outside.

"You know he is," Lily said slowly, with dawning realisation and for the first time, James looked her in the eye.

"No, he isn't!" James shook his head and his look at her was pleading. Lily, instinctively, went to comfort him, only to pause when he flinched away. He rubbed his eyes behind their glasses and looked down at the floor. "No, he isn't," James said, softly, brokenly.

"James," Lily said and James stiffened. "James, I'm not going to make you choose between us even if he is," she said slowly. He laughed but it was sharp and far too humourless to even be called that.

"And what if I am? Would you make me choose then?" He looked at her, his eyes shiny with tears.

Lily's stomach twisted. She hadn't really thought about it, or rather she hadn't let herself think about it. Oh, she had seen how a part of James had opened up when Sirius was there in a way at which none of his other friends matched up and more than once she had caught what might have been a bitten off name when they were having sex and he would have his eyes tight shut.

"If - If I admit that he is, then I have to admit that I am and I'll have to choose." James shook his head, looking sick. "I can't choose. Please, Lily, don't make me choose." He looked like his heart was breaking in front of her, as if he was already imagining making the choice. Lily didn't know which one he would choose and she should have been able to see his love from that lack of knowledge alone. But if he lost one of them, he would lost part of himself.

If he chose Sirius, she would have to leave because how could she live with a man who chose his friend over his soon-to-be wife? How could she live with him knowing she was second-best? But equally, how could she live with James without Sirius? Not to mention what it would do to Sirius and, almost despite herself, she liked Sirius. He was arrogant and insecure, cheerful and pessimistic, a bundle of contradictions all in one. He looked at Lily like she had broken his heart but he smiled at her anyway, as if he had been expecting it. To make James choose was to break whatever relationship they had, no matter which way he chose, but you couldn't have three people in a marriage.

Couldn't you? Lily had never seen it done before but Marlene was allowed to sleep with other people apart from her husband as long as she owled him about them and Dorcas and her wife didn't live with each other but were nauseatingly happy together. Lily had said yes to James' proposal, knowing that she wasn't just accepting James but Sirius too. James was already torn between the two of them, he was already committing emotional infidelity, it just hadn't crossed that physical line yet. Would he really be so bad to bring Sirius in? It wouldn't be the kind of marriage her parents had had but she and James would be far happier for it.

She came out of her thoughts to find James crying silently in front of her, the tears running down his face and dripping off his chin. He looked devastated as if he had already heard a decision. "I'll go - go and talk to Sirius," he said flatly.

"James, no!" Lily hugged him, her arms around his neck and pulled him close. "I said yes to marrying you," she said into his ear. "And that meant all of you. Including the part of you that belongs to Sirius." James sobbed and crushed her in his arms. She tolerated it for a minute, allowing the worst of the sobs to settle before pulling back as much as she could. "James, Jamie. It's okay to be in love with me and Sirius at the same time. It's okay."

"It hurts, Lily," he managed to get out and she felt her own eyes grow wet. He was in such pain, how had she not noticed this? She hugged him and rocked him as if he were a child and he continued to cry until he had no tears left. Eventually Lily managed to coax him over to the sofa and sat them both down. James' face was red and puffy.

"James, this is going to be our marriage," Lily said as firmly as she could. She knew her own face was blotchy after her own crying and she couldn't stop sniffing. "No one else's. What we do with our marriage is our own business." She sniffed again and wondered how to put this. "Can you pass me a tissue please?" she gestured at the tissue box and he handed it to her willingly enough before going back to staring at her

"Lily, what are you saying?" James watched her avidly.

Lily took a breath. Was she actually doing this? She could be opening herself up to a lot of jealousy and heartbreak. Then again, they couldn't keep going as they were, someone was bound to break. "Sirius is in love with you. You're in love with Sirius. I'm saying that I'm okay if you want to date Sirius. With everything that entails." Lily let out a breath. It was like an enormous weight had been lifted off her. No longer would she be ignoring the elephant in the room, no longer would she had to try and fend off those looks towards her and Sirius without actually admitting to anyone that she knew what those looks were for.

"You're joking," James said flatly, completely disbelieving.

"James, really?" Now Lily was exasperated, which was a welcome shift back to normal.

"But you can't!"

"Oh yes I can," Lily retorted and then was forcefully reminded of the Muggle pantomines she used to attend when she was little. "Look, it's like you said, asking to choose between us would be like asking which leg you would prefer to be cut off. It would hurt you and it would hurt me either way you chose. Part of you has always belonged to Sirius and this is just acknowledging it. Not to mention I like Sirius, though not quite in the same way as you do. I don't want to lose him from our lives."

James stared at her for so long, she became uncomfortable. "Lily," he said solemnly, holding up one of her hands to kiss the back of it. "You are one of the very best people I have ever met and I thank my lucky stars every day that you chose to fall in love with me."

Lily's cheeks grew warm and she laughed, but it was choked with her tears. "You're very easy to fall in love with, James Potter, especially now you've deflated your head." James pulled her in closer and she remembered why they had come here in the first place. She resisted his hug for a moment. "James, there's a reason I brought this up." And she moved his hand in hers down to her stomach. "It's probably best if we knew what we were doing before the baby comes after all," Lily said as James just stared. And kept on staring.

Lily waved a hand in front of his face and wondered if this was a normal reaction to being told you were going to have a child. It didn't seem like it was a bad silence, more a shocked kind of silence.

"James?" she asked after about thirty seconds but he kept on staring. "Right, okay." She set a timer on her wand and watched as her boyfriend's expression changed from shock, to delight, to terror and then back round again. To be fair, Lily had the same reaction when the spell showed she was pregnant so she allowed her fiancé a few moments.

"Lily," James finally said in a hoarse voice. "You're having a baby."

"We're having a baby," Lily corrected him. "Though yes, I'll be the one doing all the work." And that part was scary enough. Her husband's expression suddenly split into a delighted smile, though the fear didn't die away completely, and Lily was swept up into a hug. She put her arms around her husband's neck and pulled him into a kiss, allowing the happiness of the news to overshadow everything, even the war.

"I can't believe it." James pulled back to spread one hand over Lily's still flat stomach. "We're going to have a baby." She laughed and tried not to feel like anyone was missing as she pulled James down onto the sofa as he started to talk baby names and midwitches and getting a place of their own.

Lily allowed the distraction from their previous topic because she could see her husband's mind working behind the babbling and knew he was turning over what she had said and what he wanted to do. She listened to him with the kind of loving patience she had learned while watching her father do the same when her mother started talking about cross-stitching.

The knock on the door was unexpected and both of them exchanged looks, the easy mood suddenly turning tense.

"You expecting anyone?" James asked slowly as he stood up and drew his wand.

"No," Lily answered as she picked her own wand up from the table. She let James go first, only because after the news tonight, he was probably a little more on edge about her being in combat. They both angled their wands at the door as James opened it.

"Sirius," James said as soon as he saw who it was. Neither of them lowered their wands completely but Lily did relax a fraction. Sirius didn't have his wand drawn and didn't look surprised to see their wands pointed at him. "What nickname did you want to give me instead of Prongs?"

"I wanted to call you Pointy but for some reason you didn't like it." Sirius smirked at James and Lily watched the two of them together. Sirius looked at James like he was the centre of his universe, his gaze following every movement in a kind of watchful hunger. How James could have chosen not to see the stare or believed it to be brotherly was beyond her.

"Sirius, I'm glad you're here." James pulled Sirius into a hug, which was returned enthusiastically. Sirius tucked his head into the join where James' neck met his shoulder and something in his expression, from what Lily could see, relaxed. If Lily had been in his position and could only watch as the man she loved married someone else, she didn't think she could handle it with as much composure as Sirius had done so far. Lily wanted to cry again but that would only serve to freak everyone out. She was barely two months pregnant and here she was already getting hit by the hormones.

Sirius caught sight of her over James' shoulder and something flickered in his eyes. Guilt or regret or something else? Whatever it was, he pulled back from James in a move that was both quick and casual.

"Lils, you're looking well." He stepped forward and pulled her into a hug, though this one was far more brotherly than the one he had just given James. She hugged him back and felt comforted. Sirius was a constant in their lives and she couldn't imagine what they would do without him. She would miss him just as much as James, she realised, though for very different reasons. Sirius made this whole war just a little bit easier to bear.

The door shut and James redid the spells and the locks as Lily and Sirius pulled back. "Sirius, I wasn't expecting you tonight." She raised her eyebrows at James and he shook his head.

"Yeah, Moony said the two of you were holing up here for the night." Sirius looked around at the sitting room, at the two empty cups of tea and the now half-empty box of tissues. "I had nothing to do so I thought I would come and see you guys." He was looking into the little bin Lily kept in the sitting room. She gave James a pointed look and jerked her head at Sirius.

He shook his head vehemently.

_Talk to him,_ she mouthed. Honestly, Sirius showed up and interrupted what could only be a couples' night and didn't think anything strange of it. Actually, to be honest, the other times he had done it, neither had Lily or James. Which said something for how involved Sirius was in their relationship. Lily was finding she was a little frustrated with herself. How had she missed the obvious clues for so long? Maybe she had been like James and had been trying not to see it.

James shook his head again and Lily lifted her arms in a gesture of helpless frustration.

"Are you guys okay? There are tissues everywhere." Sirius looked at the two of them and they had to stop their nonverbal conversation.

"Well," Lily said slowly. "We were talking about something upsetting and then it was good. So it was sad tears and then happy tears. And then there was good news but it was both happy and sad. A lot of crying was involved." Sirius stared at her and then looked around at James, who looked like he was trying to deny he had ever cried in his life, but his eyes were still a little red and puffy. He was not a pretty crier. Sirius, who knew James better than anyone else alive, could see the signs just as Lily could.

"James, what's wrong?" Sirius sounded worried now. Since his back was to Lily, she gestured at James again.

TALK, she mouthed as dramatically as possible. James looked like, for lack of a better metaphor, a deer in headlights.

"Erm," he said and then said nothing more. Lily smacked her forehead with the palm of her hand but hastened to lift her head when Sirius looked at her. He was obviously confused.

"Did something happen?" Sirius asked both of them and Lily finally gave up.

"Yes, something did happen," she said, a little too loudly. James was staring at her like she was a nundu about to attack and Sirius just looked bewildered, though a hint of panic was coming into his expression.

"What? What is it? What's wrong?"

"Oh my God," Lily muttered. "Nothing's wrong, Sirius. Everything will be fine. Both of us just realised something and it was a shock to both of us. But now the shock is gone and it's a very good thing." Never had she felt more sorry for Sirius Black, though that sympathy was dampened down after she noticed him looking at her like she had lost her marbles. "James here is going to talk to you about it."

"What?" James sounded like a mix between a rooster and someone who had breathed in helium from a party balloon. That was one thing Lily missed about the Muggle world - the party balloons. Those blown up by magic didn't have the same nostalgic feel.

"What the fuck is going on?" It seemed like Sirius had reached the end of his patience.

"James will tell you. I'm going to make myself a cup of tea and then drink it." James looked completely panicked but Lily didn't know why. They knew Sirius was in love with James, the only trouble was that if Sirius wanted to make James leave Lily. But since the possibility of that was so low Lily wasn't even worried about it, she didn't see why James was so concerned about the whole thing.

Lily went into the kitchen, muttering under her breath. She made herself a cup of tea and listened to the rise and fall of voices in the sitting room. If she strained her ears she could catch the odd word but she tried not to, instead taking a sip of decaf tea and wondered if she could taste it only because she knew it was decaf. Thinking about how she should get into drinking hot chocolate instead, she raised her head when there was a crash from the other room. She drew her wand and went through, only to find Sirius and James the only ones there. They were staring at each other across the sitting room, one of the chairs overturned in between them.

They turned to look at her and noticed her raised wand.

James ran a hand through his hair. "Sorry, Lils. We didn't mean to make you jump."

"Lily," Sirius sounded hoarse. "I didn't mean - it wasn't - I'm so sorry." Lily looked at him in alarm. Sirius was pale and trembling, looking like he had sprinted up four flights of stairs escaping from a gang of Death Eaters.

She turned to look at James, who was watching Sirius like a cheetah about to pounce. There were anti-apparation wards on the flat, apart from one end of the hallway, and she knew James would tackle Sirius if he even took a step near it. "Is he talking about what we just talked about?" she asked and James nodded. "What did you even say?" When she looked at Sirius, he looked, if possible, even more terrified. "Sirius, I knew what James wanted to talk to you about. I'm not sure how he did it but I know and I'm okay with it."

"How?" Sirius breathed out. He was watching Lily as if she was going to be the one to attack him.

"Because I knew when I fell in love with him that part of him would belong to you," Lily said honestly. "To the Marauders really, but you most of all. It's why I took so long to say yes in seventh year, I was making sure I could accept having a boyfriend who would always place me on the same level as his best friend." This was as much a surprise to James as it was to Sirius. When he had asked her why she had said yes to him, it had only been their second date and she hadn't wanted to go into great detail about how she spent the entire summer before seventh year working at her dad's accountancy office and thinking about her future. "Look, Sirius. Just know that I've thought about this. A lot. And I wouldn't have said anything to James if I hadn't been sure about how this is going to go, especially considering his reaction. Yes, we'll have some growing pains, just like when James and I started dating. But it's worth it."

Sirius looked between her and James, seemingly completely and utterly speechless. "I don't know what to say," he mumbled. Sirius Black never mumbled.

Lily didn't know what to do and she looked helplessly at James. Her fiancé was watching them both with so much love that Lily wondered how she had never seen it before. James stepped forward, instinctively knowing what Sirius needed.

"You don't need to say anything," James said as he pulled Sirius into a hug. Sirius was reluctant at first but then his arms went around James so tightly that Lily worrying about injury. He buried his face into James' shoulder as if he wanted to hide from the world. "Just stay with me."

Lily felt a little awkward, a bit of a third wheel so she headed back to the kitchen but not before blowing James a kiss. She started to look in the cupboards for cake. It was definitely deserved.

A minute later, Sirius came into the kitchen at a dead run and pulled Lily into a tight hug, though this was one was far more like the hugs he normally gave her. Even if Lily didn't know his Animagus form, then she would have guessed from the way he hugged her.

"You are the best witch I've ever known," he said and gave her a loud, smacking kiss on her cheek. She had gone red she knew, but her smile was irrepressible. Sirius looked happier than she had ever seen him and his happiness was infectious.

"Has James given you the best news yet?" Lily asked when they were joined in the kitchen by James. He shook his head at her and Sirius looked between the two of them.

"You only told me an hour ago, I'm still in shock," James joked. He came up to the two of them and angled himself so he was pressed against Sirius but could still curl a lock of Lily's hair around his finger.

"What? What is it?"

Lily nodded at James. "Go on, I'll have loads more chances."

"Lily's pregnant." James' smile looked like it was never going away.

Sirius stared for a second. "No fucking way." He looked at Lily and she nodded in confirmation. "No way. Prongs." And he kissed James right on the lips before pulling Lily into another hug.

"That is how you react," Lily said with a smile and a pointed glance at James. He ducked his head and laughed.

"What happened?" Sirius asked.

"He stared into space for two minutes. I timed it." Sirius roared with laughter and James and Lily laughed along with him, because how could they not?

"You'll be godfather, right?" James asked.

"And you can't tell anyone else," Lily said with a warning look. Sirius raised his eyebrows in surprise. "Not until we get to three months. The first trimester is where most of the miscarriages happen. I don't want to tell everyone and then have to tell everyone again that I lost the baby."

James rubbed her back soothingly and Sirius hugged her.

"You're going to have a baby Lils," he said and his utter confidence was reassuring to hear. She looked at James as she leaned back into Sirius' hug. She knew things would get difficult and there would be times where it felt like this wasn't working, much like her and James sometimes, but right now she didn't think of any better way.


End file.
